Prevent Don't Promote Marijuana/THC Use

A man holds a sheet of THC concentrate known as “shatter,” in Denver, Colorado. (Brennan Linsley/Associated Press)

Residents in states that voted recently to approve recreational marijuana commercialization will now have to deal with the reality of what will be for sale in their downtown stores.

Among the “products” they legalized is “shatter”, a chemical reduction of the marijuana plant that is nearly 100% pure psychoactive neurotoxin THC. The product is consumed by “dabbing.” In a process akin to freebasing cocaine, shards of shatter are vaporized with a blowtorch in specially designed pipes–paraphernalia that will additionally grace neighborhood storefronts unless communities organize to opt out of recreational marijuana sales.

Rocky Mountain Public Television, in their recent expose, “Marijuana in Colorado: The State of High” told the tragic story of a star student and college graduate who suffers a psychotic break after habitually using “shatter” after moving to Colorado.

Now, a Victoria, BC emergency psychiatrist adds to a growing body of evidence of health harms of marijuana use, her warning of a dramatic new increase in severe mental illness cases linked to the use of shatter and other marijuana concentrates with high THC levels.

In the last year, Dr. Kiri Simms has treated ten patients after they used a marijuana concentrate.

They are “very ill and with the kind of psychotic experience that requires a stay in our psychiatric intensive care or on one of our in-patient wards,” she says.

In the past, the infrequent cases of psychosis usually were patients with a family history of schizophrenia, Dr. Simms notes.

But it’s not like the old days when such symptoms would disappear in a few hours or days. Now it takes weeks or even months before there is clearing, she says.

“Almost all our patients, even our young patients tell us they can easily obtain these products in the local dispensaries,” she notes.